Category: Computers, Science & Technology

Pretty interesting details!

Introducing Google Drive… yes, really

“Just like the Loch Ness Monster, you may have heard the rumors about Google Drive. It turns out, one of the two actually does exist.

Today, we’re introducing Google Drive – a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all of your stuff. Whether you’re working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding with your fiancé or tracking a budget with roommates, you can do it in Drive. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond.

With Google Drive, you can:

Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items.

Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just… there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We’re also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.

Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time.

You can get started with 5GB of storage for free – that’s enough to store the high-res photos of your trip to the Mt. Everest, scanned copies of your grandparents’ love letters or a career’s worth of business proposals, and still have space for the novel you’re working on. You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB.”

This MacBook Air look-alike from China… it has a 1.8 gHz processor, and runs Windows, but looks pretty good, and it will sell for ~$240.00 US. What! Cool. Install Linux, rock on!

You have heard of “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” Well, this is more like “Where in the world do they watch the Dr. Bill.TV show? Or, more to the point, where in the world have they come from to check out the web site!

The Wibiya bar along the bottom of the screen on the site has an “Online” option… right on the bar, at the far left hand side… if you click it, you can see where people have come from to view the site… graphically! Cool! So, the whole world is watching! I will have to behave myself! Ahhh, no… guess not! (By the way, the red marker is your location… in my case, when I grabbed the screen shot, in High Point, NC!)

Yep! A PC that you view via an HDMI connection for both Video and Audio, that is shown here, litterally almost actual size! And, it is only $35.00! Awesomeness!

The Raspberry Pi Computer

“The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming.

Model A has been redesigned to have 256Mb RAM, one USB port and no Ethernet (network connection). Model B has 256Mb RAM, 2 USB port and an Ethernet port. The Raspberry Pi measures 85.60mm x 53.98mm x 17mm, with a little overlap for the SD card and connectors which project over the edges. It weighs 45g. The SoC is a Broadcom BCM2835. This contains an ARM1176JZFS, with floating point, running at 700Mhz, and a Videocore 4 GPU. The GPU is capable of BluRay quality playback, using H.264 at 40MBits/s. It has a fast 3D core accessed using the supplied OpenGL ES2.0 and OpenVG libraries.

The GPU provides Open GL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG, and 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode.

The GPU is capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24 GFLOPs of general purpose compute and features a bunch of texture filtering and DMA infrastructure.

That is, graphics capabilities are roughly equivalent to Xbox 1 level of performance. Overall real world performance is something like a 300MHz Pentium 2, only with much, much swankier graphics.”

I want one to play with!!!

You HAVE to watch this cool video! Promise to watch the whole thing, though! It is AWESOME!

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“Experiments performed with a team of nano quadrotors at the GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania. Vehicles developed by KMel Robotics.

About KMel Robotics: The company was founded in late 2011 by Alex Kushleyev and Daniel Mellinger (a native of High Point, NC!), graduates of the University of Pennsylvania. We are experts in hardware design and high-performance control and we focus on developing high-end research platforms for aerial and ground robotics and pushing the limits of experimental robotics. Our goal is to work closely with various institutions (including universities) and support their research work and other applications. The scope of support will include everything from the low-level hardware to complete systems, capable of autonomous operation.

Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver in real life! How EXTREMELY COOL is that?!?! I love it! Now, we just need a real K9! By the way, the picture at right is Doctor Who’s version NOT the “real life” one… just sayin’!

Real-life Doctor Who sonic screwdriver uses ultrasonic beams to perform medical procedures

“In Doctor Who the sonic screwdriver can do anything from picking a lock to tracking aliens, but researchers at the University of Dundee in Scotland are building a real-life version that could be used to perform a variety of medical procedures. The device uses an ultrasonic beam to move objects up and down, and the beam features a rotating structure — similar to a DNA helix, but with more strands — to spin them. In a demonstration the team managed to levitate and spin a small disk in a tub of water, but it’s more than just a magic trick.

‘Like Dr. Who’s own device, our sonic screwdriver is capable of much more than just spinning things around,’ explained Dr. Mike MacDonald. He says that the device has several potential applications in the medical field, including ‘non-invasive ultrasound surgery, targeted drug delivery, and ultrasonic manipulation of cells.’ The screwdriver is being funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council — the same group behind the Cyberplasm — as part of a UK-wide project researching ultrasonic manipulation. You probably won’t see this technology in a hospital anytime soon, but we can guarantee you one thing — it won’t be much use in searching for extraterrestrial life.”

Our friend, Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols, with ZDnet, reports that Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, is winning the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in Geekdom! I’m down wit’ dat!

Linus Torvalds wins the tech. equivalent of a Nobel Prize: the Millennium Technology Prize.

“You can win Nobel prizes for physics, chemistry, and medicine, but technology? No. There is, however the Millennium Technology Prize. This is the world’s largest technology prize. It is rewarded ever two years for a technological innovation that significantly improves the quality of human life, today and in the future. This year, Linus Torvalds, Linux’s creator, and Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, maker of a new way to create stem cells without the use of embryonic stem cells, are both laureates for the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize.

This prize, which is determined by the Technology Academy of Finland, is one of the world’s largest such prizes with candidates sought from across the world and from all fields of technology. The two innovators will share over a million Euros. The final winner will be announced by the President of the Republic of Finland in a special ceremony on June 13, 2012.”

I just finished a HUGE clean-up of previously dead links, and old info in ALL my old podcast/netcast postings from episode 1 all the way through 235, here on the blog! Wow! That was painful! BUT, the good news is that now when you go to look for ALL our video netcasts, they are there, as they should be, at this link:

https://www.drbill.tv/category/dr-bill-netcasts/

And, all our audio netcasts are at this link:

https://www.drbill.tv/category/dr-bill-audio/

So, that is good, I think I will go now and have a little lie down (to quote Hitchhiker’s Guide!)

There are a lot of clueless people in the world, and sometimes, their ignorance can be VERY entertaining!

Are You Kidding Me? Strangest Helpdesk Requests

“‘Can you help me fix my toilet?’ Believe it or not, the person who asked this question was calling his company’s IT help desk, not the plumber. This is just one of the unusual requests CIOs said they or their support staff have received, according to a new Robert Half Technology survey.

These types of inquiries aren’t all that bizarre for help desk professionals, and they demonstrate it often takes patience as well as technical know-how to assist colleagues at work.

The survey was developed by Robert Half Technology, a provider of IT professionals on a project and full-time basis. It was conducted by an independent research firm and is based on telephone interviews with more than 1,400 CIOs from companies across the United States with 100 or more employees.

CIOs were asked, ‘What is the strangest or most unusual request you or a member of your help desk or technical support team has ever received?’

Their responses included:

• “How do I clean cat hair out of my computer fan?”
• “How do I remove a sesame seed from the keyboard?”
• “I need help drilling holes in the wall.”
• “Can you come over and plug in this cord for me?”
• “I need you to install a video monitoring system.”
• “Can I turn on the coffee pot with my computer?”
• “I dropped my phone in the toilet. What should I do?”
• “I want to download software to change an audio file to video.”
• “How do I pirate software?”

Help desk professionals are known for lending a hand even if a request falls outside their job description, but these employees took the concept too far:

• “We need you to fix the microwave in the lunchroom.”
• “Can you recommend a good dry cleaner?”
• “Can you help me fix my chair?”
• “Can you help us get money out of the vending machine?”
• “I can’t find my packages online! Can you help me?”
• “Can you help me fix my toilet?”
• “My car’s cup holder is broken. Can you fix it?”
• “Can you help me repair a washing machine?”
• “Where can I find a video of Elvis Presley online?”

Help desk professionals are willing to answer just about any technical question, but some end users may want to enroll in a ‘Computer 101’ course:

• “I’d like to download the entire Internet so I can take it with me.”
• “How do I start the Internet?”
• “Will you show me how to use the mouse?”
• “My computer won’t turn on or off.” (The computer was unplugged.)
• “How do I send an email?”
• “How do I click on different files?”

‘Beyond their entertainment value, these unusual requests demonstrate the strong customer service skills necessary to work in the help desk and technical support fields,’ said John Reed, executive director of Robert Half Technology. ‘The best IT professionals are composed and empathetic — and, of course, have a good sense of humor.'”

Well, is it? Oracle says, “Yes.” Google says, “No!” What you write (the code of a program written in a language) is copyrightable. But, what about the computer language itself? That is what Google and Oracle will be hashing out in court starting this coming Monday! Stay tuned!

Oracle thinks you can copyright a programming language, Google disagrees

“Oracle’s case against Google has evolved primarily into a copyright infringement suit over the past several months, and with the full trial scheduled to begin this coming Monday, the court is making an effort to get down to the nuts and bolts of copyright law. The judge issued an order last week requiring that both Google and Oracle provide their respective positions on a fundamental issue in the case:

‘Each side shall take a firm yes or no position on whether computer programming languages are copyrightable.’

That’s right, the judge is asking the lawyers representing two hugely successful software companies to commit to potential limits on software protection. And they’ve both now provided their responses. Google has this to say on the subject:

‘NO, COMPUTER PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES ARE NOT COPYRIGHTABLE. GOOGLE HAS NEVER TAKEN ANY OTHER POSITION.’

Google then goes on to explain that ‘a given set of statements or instructions may be protected, but the protection does not extend to the method of operation or system — the programming language — by which they are understood by the computer.’ Google is arguing that a computer language is ‘inherently a utilitarian, nonprotectable means by which computers operate’ and merely provides the structure, selection and organization of the software.

Under US copyright law, a general idea is not itself protectable, but an original and creative expression of the idea can be. Under the umbrella of this legal tenet, Google is proposing that a programming language is just an idea or utilitarian tool, while the actual software created through this medium of programming language is the expression that can be protected.”